After a late Thursday night that may or may not have involved more reading of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire when I should have been sleeping, I hit BlogHer early for breakfast. The sessions were good, and I met many a blogHer. This is what many a blogHer looks like on the way to the keynote lunch.

I didn’t attend the Friday night parties because CM and I had our own plans for the evening: an intimate night of music in New Jersey with Coldplay.

Are you ever late for something, like an assignment at school or an overdue library book, but instead of rushing to get it done, you just put it off even more? That’s probably just our weird neurosis. Anyway, that’s how I felt about this post: A quick recap of our busy last weekend – which we loved – at BlogHer. I was thinking of just shelving it, but there aren’t many occasions where you can watch Cool Mum dance around wearing a bag from a prominent fast food restaurant chain.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 2

BlogHer kicked off Thursday with some special events during the day and a video keynote address from President Barack Obama in the late afternoon. I missed the Prez because I racing to finish my work since Friday and Saturday were completely booked. I made it in time for the Evening at the Expo, which started at 6pm.

Our main reason for attending BlogHer was to meet people. There aren’t many bloggers in our circles of friends, so we don’t usually have a chance to talk about the thrills and travails of spilling your life out online for the world to see. We wanted to meet some like-minded folk and have riotous discussions about analytics and RSS feeds. And we hoped for the slim chance that if people actually met us, they might be tricked someday into reading our blog. Continue reading →

“So, what are you doing here? I wonder about the men who attend BlogHer.”

When a woman at the BlogHer Annual Conference asked me this, it confirmed my number one worry: women thinking that I’m hitting on them. That’s why I started off my conversations with “MY WIFE and I run a blog called ‘Are We Still Cool’…”

I talked to another guy blogger, and he felt the same way. We’re innocent, we’re harmless, we write blogs that appeal to women, and we’re NOT looking for love!

The situation is so amusing and awkward – a handful of men among 4,000 women bloggers – that I thought it was perfect for a meme. Hence, the birth of BlogHer Conference Carl, that guy at BlogHer who you’re sure is hitting on you – but not so much (featuring a number of inside jokes from the conference.)